Hey Americans! If you buy things from overseas, as of August 22 you probably donโt anymore.
Most foreign postal services have paused shipping of packages under $800 to the USA. You will hear that itโs โbecause of tariffs,โ but thatโs not exactly true.
Itโs because the US:
- Has not given anyone a way to pay those tariffs and
- Has not been clear on what will ACTUALLY have to be paid. (The countryโs tariff has been floated, but a US$80 flat fee has also been floated.
Many countries require people to pay tariffs when they receive a package. Thatโs fine. But you have to give people a way to pay the damn tariff. And there isnโt a way to do so. Apparently there isnโt even a PLAN for a way to do so.
So: if you have been buying from Etsy or eBay or a little shop overseas, if you subscribe to a foreign magazine, if you are an immigrant and you buy food from home via mail, now you will need to fly there and bring it home. Of course, the people who can afford that are also the ones responsible for this dumb policy.
I live outside the US. This is impacting businesses owned by my friends. This is impacting me, increasing the cost of sending items to friends and family (via courier or DHL now) . This sending-stoppage is a sensible global response to this badly thought out tariff imposition. This sucks.
Pulling this out of tags from @thesepossessedbylight:
You are both right and wrong.
- Correct! The de minimis exception is going away
- WRONG! Countries arenโt just refusing to ship. They canโt ship because the US government wonโt tell them whether US people will pay: the tariff amount, an $80 flat fee, or a $200 flat fee. (I didnโt know a $200 flat fee was on the table but Bloomberg reported it this morning.)
- The US government also has no method currently for Americans to pay the fee. But the shipping services and sellers will be on the hook if recipients donโt pay it, and recipients wonโt get their goods if they donโt pay it.
Itโs Kafkaesque. โSure, you can ship it! We arenโt stopping you! We just wonโt give your customers any way to pay the fee and youโll incur a fiscal penalty when they donโt!โ
Thanks for the clarification, @tafkarfanfic ! This puts into perspective a LOT of the confusion Iโm hearing from businesses in my country, who seem frankly totally baffled about what theyโre meant to be doing to get our goods into the US.
The usual shitshow of incompetence (whether deliberate or not) we've come to expect from this government. Right up there with the constantly shifting numbers.
So I work in trade compliance (basically I help my company determine what CAN be shipped to the US and what it will cost/what info we need to get it here). And the above de minimis explanation is mostly right itโs just missing some importance information/context:
De minimus is a rule that allows packages under 800 dollars to be shipped into the US without submitting a formal entry to Customs. This means:
- Packages donโt have to pay any duty or tariff (what people have been talking about)
- AND they donโt need any paperwork (like is this item a medical device? Whatโs FDA information does it need? Does the ink in this pen contain any prohibited chemicals in? Is your product safe for children?
The paperwork/regulations surrounding importing goods can be very complicated, and itโs why my job exists. You as the person importing have to make sure you can provide all the information to fill out the form.
So not ONLY do they need to have a way for people to pay, they ALSO donโt have the means for small businesses or random people to submit government forms. Which need to be reviewed, and if a product doesnโt have all the information the government holds it until you get the information (and pay all the holding costs), or long enough passes that they own it and just dispose of or sell it.
Understandably UPS, FedEX and other international shipping companies are just not gonna ship till all that gets sorted out.
Side note: Back when Trump first started tariffing the world like a toddler drunk with power, he also removed the de minimis exemption for China. Fun fact: most of the under 800 packages? Comes from China. So every company basically stopped shipping for a bit because they had no idea how to pay the extra fee or anything else. Customs also had no idea HOW to process all these millions of packages per day with the same staffing level. And what packages did ship we routed through JUST ONE PORT, meaning the amount of packages that could be dealt with in a day were just waaaay small.
Shortly after Trump TACOโd and reinstated de minimis for China.
Then after that, the goddamn budget bill was passed, which ALSO fully repealed de minimis for every country, but wasnโt set to go into effect until like July 2027(? I think, donโt feel like looking up the exact date), so theyโd ya know, have time to figure shit out. Or walk it back. Come to now, Trump who thought that was too long, or he wanted another story to distract from Epstein, who knows, decided to issue an executive order on July 30th. And that is what ends de minimis for ALL countries, effective August 29th.
So yeah. Itโs gonna be a mess to figure out how to sort this out. A lot of small business are gonna get hurt by this.
